Anyone who ever visited Joe Franklin in his office, and found his/her way out again, should tell the tale.
It began for me in a line of travelers waiting for a Greyhound in the dismal departure area of the Port Authority bus terminal in midtown Manhattan. I was returning home from a writer’s conference; nestled in my carry-on were the drafts of some work which I intended to develop into a book but that has, instead, landed on this website. Idly, I noticed a dark-haired man wearing a necktie with a portrait of silent screen star Theda Bara on it. (No, the man was not Joe Franklin.)
The audacious tie was such a welcome sight in the dreary setting that I tuned up my energy toward the man to catch his attention. He looked over. “Great tie,” I said with a combination of words and gestures to make myself quickly understood over the metal bar that divided the passengers into sections. He smiled. “Theda Bara,” I said, nodding my appreciation and approval.
A flash of amazement crossed his face. “How did you know?” he quizzed.
I smiled back and answered, with an off-handed sincerity that would only be appropriate if the world were a perfect place, “I thought everybody knew.”
The guy told me the tie belonged to his father, hinting that his father was someone of note. I asked who his father was but, with a modesty I took for coyness, he wouldn’t tell me. Still chatting while boarding and during the bus ride bound for Upstate New York, our conversation led to his confession that his dad was Joe Franklin and to my admission that it was, of course, a little preposterous to say that everybody would recognize a portrait of Theda Bara on a necktie.
I handed Brad Franklin the early versions of the profiles of Edward Binns, Larry Gates, and John Hoyt. He read them. Then he told me I was an historian and handed me his father’s phone number.
And so my brief and rewarding association with Joe Franklin – TV talk show and radio host, legend, show biz culture historian, New Yorker, and American treasure – began. Franklin was one of those people who reassures you to believe in your work. He invited me to his office in his quest to see how I could kickstart my project and get my stories published.
That’s how I came to enter the labyrinth that was his office. Towering stacks of publications, files, books, and various forms of information on paper formed pathways I had to weave through, following the sound of his voice as he coaxed me along. I came to find him at his old wooden desk; when I found him he looked rounded and lovable. As we talked he began searching for the business card of a west coast publisher to give me. A tiny thing like a business card in this kingdom of paper!
I remember the slight smile on his face as he patted himself down and patted down some of his surroundings in the search, repeating the phrase, “I’m so bad, I’m so bad,” under his breath. I assured him it was fine and bade him to take his time but he seemed to enjoy quietly chastising himself until he did, indeed, find the card. “I’m so bad, I’m so bad.”
I wove my way back out of his office and the project went on to evolve in a way that neither of us anticipated.
Society lost him in January of this year at the age of 88. But you can’t ever really lose someone like Joe Franklin. He was an original personae whose gentle resonance will rebound as long as there is a civilization worth preserving. ~FW